Psychological Safety Quotes

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.

The Queen is controlling, the Witch is sadistic, the Hermit is fearful, and the Waif is helpless. And each requires a different approach. Don't let the Queen get the upper hand; be wary even of accepting gifts because it engenders expectations. Don't internalize the Hermit's fears or become limited by them. Don't allow yourself to be alone with the Witch; maintain distance for your own emotional and physical safety. And with the Waif, don't get pulled into her crises and sense of victimization. Pay attention to your own tendencies to want to rescue her, which just feeds the dynamic.

For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers – but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.

psychological safety—the belief that you can take a risk without being penalized or punished.

Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother’s uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self.

Connecting with others gives us a sense of inclusion, connection, interaction, safety, and community. Your vibe attracts your tribe, so if you want to attract positive and healthy relationships, be one! Staying connected and getting reconnected feeds the flow of goodness which empowers our humanity.

[A] process was going on in which people were transformed into things, into pieces of reality which pure science can calculate and technical science can control. … [T]he safety which is guaranteed by well-functioning mechanisms for the technical control of nature, by the refined psychological control of the person, by the rapidly increasing organizational control of society – this safety is bought at a high price: man, for whom all this was invented as a means, becomes a means himself in the service of means.

Forgetting is, I think, a form of protection.

We are born with inalienable emotional needs for love, safety, acceptance, freedom, attention, validation of our feelings, and physical holding. Healthy identity is based on the fulfillment of these needs.

...To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity, "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity of "man" attached to the tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rovers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed...

Traumatic events challenge an individual's view of the world as a just, safe and predictable place. Traumas that are caused by human behavior. . . commonly have more psychological impact than those caused by nature.

It wasn't that I gave up on her healing, but, as she continued to struggle to get in the door and actively needed her self-hatred to stay functional, I began to realize more deeply that her patterns had meaning and that it wasn't useful for me to predetermine what recovery might look like for her.

Success depends on psychological safety. At Google, members of teams with high levels of psychological safety were less likely to leave their jobs, brought in more revenue, and were rated effective twice as often by executives. MIT researchers who studied team performance came to the same conclusion: simply grouping smart people together doesn’t guarantee a smart team. Online and off, the best teams discuss ideas frequently, do not let one person dominate the conversation, and are sensitive to one another’s feelings.

Hierarchy (or, more specifically, the fear it creates when not handled well) reduces psychological safety.

The barriers we face in life are so often the ones we create in our minds. As a child I couldn’t open that wooden gate because my body prevented me from doing so. As a teenager it seemed I couldn’t open that door because my mind held me hostage. The world that waited beyond it now was no longer one of safety or escape. Instead, I knew every time that I opened that door, it would be to a life of psychological insecurity and emotional entrapment. She - that cerebral leech who clung to all my thoughts - convinced me of this fact. Only with her could I find and maintain an asylum of mental armour

Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.

A few years ago I heard Jerome Kagan, a distinguished emeritus professor of child psychology at Harvard, say to the Dalai Lama that for every act of cruelty in this world there are hundreds of small acts of kindness and connection. His conclusion: "To be benevolent rather than malevolent is probably a true feature of our species." Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. Numerous studies of disaster response around the globe have shown that social support is the most powerful protection against becoming overwhelmed by stress and trauma. Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else's mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.

From Zachary Blake? Not a chance in hell. All his cases are high-profile. And these days, he’s got a Midas touch. Every case he touches turns to gold. Blake is on a personal crusade for civil justice and safety—truth, justice, and the American way, don’t you know? Guns are an excellent target issue for someone like him.

The human brain has a safety switch that gets engaged by traumatic exposure and experiences. It’s similar to being in shock but we remain there until it’s long over. We detach. We create degrees of separation between ourselves and what we feel, think, perceive, and ultimately, this impacts not only our worldview but also our perception of self. Clinically, this is called “Dissociation.

Humility is an essential component of servant leadership. Servant leaders recognize that they are not infallible and that they have much to learn from others. They are open to feedback, willing to admit their mistakes, and quick to give credit to others. This humility creates a culture of psychological safety, where individuals feel comfortable sharing ideas, expressing concerns, and taking risks without fear of judgment or reprisal.

Safety IS the treatment. -- Stephen W Porges, 2016

we are adaptive rather than disordered

As long as I was aligned with listening rather than with an intention to receive a particular response or to shift something, we would stay on safe ground.

the practice of nonjudgmental, agendaless presence [is] the foundation for safety and co-regulation.

Create psychological safety by encouraging open discussion, answering questions without condescension, and making it okay to take risks and admit mistakes. Don’t shy away from task conflict. Instead, create structures that prevent creative clashes from becoming personal. For relationship conflict, listen to the other person and calmly share your perspective. Get rid of (or if you can’t, contain) bad apples to preserve psychological safety on your team.

These moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. Eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass in an unutterably menacing thing. Your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. There is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. Your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. The encounter will be short and murderous. You tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsmen, and the terror of the quarry. You are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape.

The needs for safety, belonging, love relations and for respect can be satisfied only by other people, i.e., only from outside the person. This means considerable dependence on the environment. A person in this dependent position cannot really be said to be governing himself, or in control of his own fate. He must be beholden to the sources of supply of needed gratifications. Their wishes, their whims, their rules and laws govern him and must be appeased lest he jeopardize his sources of supply. He must be, to an extent, “other-directed,” and must be sensitive to other people’s approval, affection and good will. This is the same as saying that he must adapt and adjust by being flexible and responsive and by changing himself to fit the external situation. He is the dependent variable; the environment is the fixed, independent variable.

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally.....to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life.

Now, for example, people with freckles aren’t thought of as a minority by the nonfreckled. They aren’t a minority in the sense we’re talking about. And why aren’t they? Because a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary. Anyone here disagree with that? If you do, just ask yourself, What would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority overnight? You see what I mean? Well, if you don’t – think it over! “All right. Now along come the liberals – including everybody in this room, I trust – and they say, ‘Minorities are just people, like us.’ Sure, minorities are people – people, not angels. Sure, they’re like us – but not exactly like us; that’s the all-too- familiar state of liberal hysteria in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see any difference between a Negro and a Swede….” (Why, oh why daren’t George say “between Estelle Oxford and Buddy Sorensen”? Maybe, if he did dare, there would be a great atomic blast of laughter, and everybody would embrace, and the kingdom of heaven would begin, right here in classroom. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t.) “So, let’s face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and – think differently from us and hay faults we don’t have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them than if we try to smear our feelings over with pseudo liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting. I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that if we ignore something long enough it’ll just vanish…. “Where was I? Oh yes. Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted, never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons. There always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints? “And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority–not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities, because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they’re all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to You, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it – some motive – some trick…

Psychological safety is the key to creating a workplace where people can be confident enough to act without undue fear of being ridiculed, punished, or fired – and be humble enough to openly doubt what is believed and done. As Amy Edmondson’s research shows, psychological safety emerges when those in power persistently praise, reward, and promote people who have the courage to act, talk about their doubts, successes, and failures, and work doggedly to do things better the next time.

When society questions a victim’s reluctance to report, I will be here to remind you that you ask us to sacrifice our sanity to fight outdated structures that were designed to keep us down. Victims do not have the time for this. Victims are also students, teachers, parents, who can’t give up work or education. The average adult can barely find time to renew their license at the DMV. It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place. This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there’s a probable chance of achieving safety, justice, and restoration rather than being retraumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented, and verbally mauled. The real question we need to be asking is not, Why didn’t she report, the question is, Why would you?

The NRA is an outdated special interest group. The Association’s membership does not have the best interests of our students or the safety of our schools in mind. Its’ influence must be diminished and ultimately destroyed. The NRA has our fallen friends’ blood on its hands.

Which kind of safety are we endorsing here? Is it the safety from psychological “power over” and actual harm? Or is it the safety from being made uncomfortable by accurate information that challenges one’s self-perception?

For knowledge work to flourish, the workplace must be one where people feel able to share their knowledge! This means sharing concerns, questions, mistakes, and half-formed ideas.

lack of agenda is the primary essence of safety, giving our people implicit permission to bring forward any aspect of themselves that needs attention.

 “We plan to take on this law [Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act 2005]. If we are successful, we may open a new frontier in gun safety. Perhaps the advances that have made cars and other products safer will find their way into the gun industry. All of us must work together for a safer society.

the higher the psychological safety in a unit, the fewer errors they made. Why? In the units that lacked psychological safety, health care professionals hid their errors, fearing retribution. As a result, they weren’t able to learn from their mistakes. In the units with high psychological safety, on the other hand, reporting errors made it possible to prevent them moving forward.

The U.S. legal system is organized as an adversarial contest: in civil cases, between two citizens; in criminal cases, between a citizen and the state. Physical violence and intimidation are not allowed in court, whereas aggressive argument, selective presentation of the facts, and psychological attack are permitted, with the presumption that this ritualized, hostile encounter offers the best method of arriving at the truth. Constitutional limits on this kind of conflict are designed to protect criminal defendants from the superior power of the state, but not to protect individual citizens from one another….All citizens are presumed to enter the legal arena on an equal footing, regardless of the real advantages that one of the parties may enjoy. The Constitution, therefore, offers strong guarantees for the rights of the accused, but no corresponding protection for the rights of crime victims. As a result, victims who choose to seek justice may face serious obstacles and risks to their health, safety, and mental health.

As a therapist, I have many avenues in which to learn about DID, but I hear exactly the opposite from clients and others who are struggling to understand their own existence. When I talk to them about the need to let supportive people into their lives, I always get a variation of the same answer. "It is not safe. They won't understand." My goal here is to provide a small piece of that gigantic puzzle of understanding. If this book helps someone with DID start a conversation with a supportive friend or family member, understanding will be increased.

What deters is not the capabilities and intentions we have, but the capabilities and intentions the enemy thinks we have. The central objective of a deterrent weapons system is, thus, psychological. The mission is persuasion.

Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the ‘off’ position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - ‘the lost child’ - who is forced to ‘choose’ and habituate to the freeze response… Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type’s defenses develop around classical dissociation.

It is lonely behind these boundaries. Some people-particularly those whom psychiatrists call schizoid-because of unpleasant, traumatizing experiences in childhood, perceive the world outside of themselves as unredeemably dangerous, hostile, confusing and unnurturing. Such people feel their boundaries to be protecting and comforting and find a sense of safety in their loneliness. But most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escapetemporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more! In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression. The experience of merging with the loved one has in it echoes from the time when we were merged with our mothers in infancy. Along with the merging we also reexperience the sense of omnipotence which we had to give up in our journey out of childhood. All things seem possible! United with our beloved we feel we can conquer all obstacles. We believe that the strength of our love will cause the forces of opposition to bow down in submission and melt away into the darkness. All problems will be overcome. The future will be all light. The unreality of these feelings when we have fallen in love is essentially the same as the unreality of the two-year-old who feels itself to be king of the family and the world with power unlimited. Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old's fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn't. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn't. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn't like his friends; he doesn't like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other's. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving.

The threat of lawsuits has increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking and has made tobacco companies market their dangerous nicotine delivery systems more responsibly. The threat of lawsuits has made all kinds of products safer. For example, over the last forty years or so, automobile deaths have been cut nearly in half by safety features in cars, developed and implemented in response to lawsuits.

Edmondson is quick to point out that psychological safety is not a matter of relaxing standards, making people comfortable, being nice and agreeable, or giving unconditional praise. It’s fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. It’s the foundation of a learning culture.

Finding out that you are wrong is even more valuable than being right, because you are learning.

the purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.

PSA: If you decide to label a behavior as gaslighting on social or in real-time, be sure you are correct. Because if you are not, you’d be the one gaslighting.

We are deeply sensitive to one another's presence

High standards in a context where there is uncertainty or interdependence (or both) combined with a lack of psychological safety comprise a recipe for suboptimal performance.

FACILITATORS EXPERIENCE mysterious emotions, fear, anger and numbness when working with groups and large organizations. That’s because group processes bring up abuse issues from the past. Understanding your own psychology better will make you a more effective facilitator by helping you (1) be sensitive to others, (2) remain centered and not go into shock when you are attacked, and (3) maintain equanimity and provide the group with a sense of safety when the group looks to you for protection in stormy times.

I heard one man say, "Cook, I like my tea strong." Another joined in, "Cook, I like mine weak." It was pleasant to know that their minds were untroubled, but I thought the time opportune to mention that the tea would be the same for all hands and that we would be fortunate if two months later we had any tea at all. It occurred to me at the time that the incident had psychological interest. Here were men, their home crushed, the camp pitched on the unstable floes, and their chance of reaching safety apparently remote, calmly attending to the details of existence and giving their attention to such trifles as the strength of a brew of tea.

A mother who is afraid to admit that she resents her children may interfere so much in their lives, under the pretect of being concerned about their welfare and safety, that her over-protection is really a form of punishment.

There is a revisionist theory, one of those depth-psychology distortions or half-truths that crop up like toadstools whenever the emotions get infected by the mind, that says we hate worst those who have done the most for us. According

Because of the anxiety inherent in being vulnerable and undefended in a new love relationship, an individual unconsciously attempts to merge and form a unit with the loved one. In forming a bond, the lover is able to alleviate anxiety and attain a false sense of security and safety by sustaining the illusion of being fused. The fantasy of being connected functions as a defense, for whenever this bond is broken, the underlying pain and fear of separation invariably surface.

Remembering that the impulse to control is an indication that we are having a neuroception of danger, perhaps we can be compassionate rather than critical of ourselves when we do step in to overtly manage the process. Perhaps we can begin to ask inside about the nature of the threat that brings on the need to assert control and fix. As always, dropping the questions into our right hemisphere and not expecting a particular answer in this moment opens the way for a deeper understanding to emerge bit by bit.

for a leader to drive a self-aware team. First, if the team doesn’t have a leader who models the way, the process will be seen as insincere or even dangerous. Second, if there isn’t the psychological safety to tell the truth, the chance of candid feedback is almost zero.

Conservative is avoiding a certain level of risk. Margin of safety is raising the odds of success at a given level of risk by increasing your chances of survival. Its magic is that the higher your margin of safety, the smaller your edge needs to be to have a favorable outcome.

Radical Candor is so often misunderstood is that it’s confused with Ray Dalio’s Radical Transparency. While Dalio and I are very much aligned on the importance of challenging directly, there’s not much focus on care personally in his “manage as someone operating a machine to achieve a goal” philosophy.1 Furthermore, relationships require some privacy, so while I am all for transparency when it comes to business results, I don’t believe that Radical Transparency fosters good working relationships, contributes to psychological safety, or results in a productive, happy culture.

Cheating and covering up are natural by-products of a top-down culture that does not accept “no” or “it can't be done” for an answer. But combining this culture with a belief that a brilliant strategy formulated in the past will hold indefinitely into the future becomes a certain recipe for failure.

Through positive thinking and related approaches, we seek the safety and solid ground of certainty, of knowing how the future will turn out, of a time in the future when we'll be ceaselessly happy and never have to fear negative emotions again. But in chasing all that, we close down the very faculties that permit the happiness we crave.

The best way to find out what you are capable of is to pretend you can do it. Act “as if” you can. What you can't do, you won't. If it really is impossible, don't worry, you'll find that out. (And be sure to set up appropriate safety measures if necessary.) As long as you believe it is impossible, you will actually never find out if it is possible or not.

Be inconveniently truthful about things that really matter.

While good leaders care about business impact, great leaders focus more on psychological impact

Current interventions in use with children include psycho-pharmacological treatments, play therapy, psychological debriefing and testimony therapy, but this was Nazi Germany in 1945!

They will not apply themselves steadily to worldly advancement, prudent connections, and the policy of safety first. So inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into Heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or ‘science’ or psychology, or what not.

what people enjoy is not the sense of being in control, but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations. It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of protective routines. Only when a doubtful outcome is at stake, and one is able to influence that outcome, can a person really know whether she is in control.

Musk let loose a bitter laugh when he heard the phrase 'psychological safety.' It made him recoil. He considered it to be the enemy of urgency, progress, orbital velocity. His preferred buzzword was 'hardcore.' Discomfort, he believed, was a good thing. It was a weapon against the scourge of complacency. Vacations, flower-smelling work-life balance, and days of 'mental rest' were not his thing

We thrive in environments that respect us and allow us to (1) feel included, (2) feel safe to learn, (3) feel safe to contribute, and (4) feel safe to challenge the status quo. If we can’t do these things, if it’s emotionally expensive, fear shuts us down. We’re not happy and we’re not reaching our potential. But when the environment nurtures psychological safety, there’s an explosion of confidence, engagement, and performance. Ask yourself if you feel included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, and safe to challenge the status quo. Finally, ask yourself if you’re creating an environment where others can do these four things. In the process, look around and see others with respect and fresh amazement, find deeper communion in your relationships, and more happiness and satisfaction in your own life.

Do you know what time is? Not by a watch, not chronological time, buy psychological time? It is the interval between idea and action. An idea is for self protection obviously; it is the idea of being secure. Action is always immediate; it is not of the past or future; to act must always be in the present, but action is so dangerous, so uncertain, that we conform to and idea which we hope will give us certain safety.

when proving what caused an accident, disciplines such as metallurgy are much less difficult to employ than psychology. So perhaps they should better be called “easy science” and psychology called “hard science.

Children need their caregiver’s presence, interaction, connection, and emotional availability. Not only are these fundamental elements closely related to feelings of safety and security, they are also vital for a child’s healthy development. Since the child’s well-being depends on the bond between themselves and their caregiver, it is their caregiver’s responsibility to be very attentive both to their own selves and to their child.

creating a vision and setting strategy—is to act in the role of social architect and nourish a context in which people are given the respect and permission to (1) feel included, (2) learn, (3) contribute, and (4) innovate.

I have other stories just as mysterious, just as beautiful, just as sacred, but it seems good to stop here and wonder if it is possible for us to begin to let go of our expectations about the shape in which healing may arrive, to trust the treatment plan lying dormant and waiting within our people, to cultivate a gradually gathering stillness so that, in the safety of the space between, healing pathways have the possibility of revealing themselves.

In one study investigating employee experiences with speaking up, 85% of respondents reported at least one occasion when they felt unable to raise a concern with their bosses, even though they believed the issue was important.

You can tell your organization confers a sense of psychological safety if employees at all levels across the organization regularly exchange ideas and debate their merits. A healthy team is one that trusts each other enough to share and dissect ideas. They may disagree passionately sometimes, but they don’t attack or criticize each other. Instead, they question ideas—even if those ideas come from leadership. They are free to explore and experiment to find what works best.

and it bothers me that psychiatric hospitals have become a dumping ground for polluted minds. Stowing them away like rat poison for the safety of the community isn’t the answer. Furthering their psychological torment isn’t the answer, either.

Sometimes people begin, discover how much pain and fear they are holding, and adaptively decide to take whatever gains they have made and stop. Occasionally we reach the limits of our competence or capacity and must help one of people find someone or a nest of people who can hold their wounds when we can't. We could likely add other situations in which we have parted with someone early in the relationship or at a time that seemed premature. All of this is part of human limitation in both of us.

standout performance correlated to affirmative responses to these five questions: Structure and clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear? Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed? Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us? Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high-quality work on time? Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?

I am in good company, simply following those in front of me and knowing others are following behind. We are on our way up a narrow staircase. The bannister is a thick rope suggesting safety. The stairs go around and around inside a church tower; or perhaps it is a minaret? The whorls of the staircase grow narrower and narrower, but as there are so many people behind there is no longer any possibility of turning around or even stopping. The pressure from behind foeces me on. The staircase suddenly stops at a garbage chute in the wall. When i open the hatch and squeeze my way through the hole, i find myself on the outside of the tower. The rope has dissappeared. It is totally dark. I cling on to the slippery, icy wall of the tower while vainly trying to find a foothold in the emptiness.

To understand why psychological safety promotes performance, we have to step back to reconsider the nature of so much of the work in today's organizations. With routine, predictable, modular work on the decline, more and more of the tasks that people do require judgment, coping with uncertainty, suggesting new ideas, and coordinating and communicating with others. This means that voice is mission critical. And so, for anything but the most independent or routine work, psychological safety is intimately tied to freeing people up to pursue excellence.

In these pages, we keep returning to one foundational principle: providing the possibility of emotional/relational safety for our people, be they patients, children, partners, friends or strangers. We are able to make this offer when they are experiencing their own neuroception of safety, not continuously, but as the baseline to which we return after our system has adaptively moved into sympathetic arousal or dorsal withdrawal in response to inner and outer conditions. When we neuroceive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability, and the movement of our "inherent treatment plan" (Sills, 2010) has a greater probability of coming forward. When we have a neuroception of threat, we adaptively tighten down at many levels, from physical tension to activation of the protective skills we have learned over a lifetime (Levine, 2010). In that state, our innate healing path will often wisely stay hidden until more favorable conditions arrive.

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences; one being that no-one ever knows the real you. The closet may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of destructive things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally. The damage of fear, shame and self-loathing from an existence inside the closet is often projected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. They live with a false sense of safety, sometimes arrogance, behind the façade, unaware of the unconscious signals they give off that all is not well in their inner world. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty and openness or secrecy and deception for themselves. When I see the impacts the closet has on individuals, there is never a moment of doubt; I made the RIGHT choice.

I'm just asking you to accept that there are some people who will go to extraordinary lengths to cover up the facts that they are abusing children. What words are there to describe what happened to me, what was done to me? Some call it ritual abuse, others call it organised abuse. There are those that call it satanic. I've heard all the phrases, not just in relation to me, but also with regard to those I work with and try to help. Do you know what I think? It doesn't matter how you dress it up, it doesn't matter what label you put on it. It is abuse, pure and simple. It is adults abusing children. It is adults deciding - actually making a conscious decision, a conscious choices that what they want, what they convince themselves they need, is more important than anything else; certainly more important than the safety or feelings or sanity of a child. However, there can be differences which are layered on top of that abuse. I'm not saying that some abuse is worse than others, or that someone 'wins' the competition to have the worst abuse inflicted on them, but ritual and organised abuse is at the extreme end of the spectrum. If we try to think of a continuum where there are lots of different things imposed on children (or, for that matter, anyone who is forced into these things — and that force can take many forms, it can be threats and promises, as well as kicks and punches), then ritual and organised abuse is intense and complicated. It often involves multiple abusers of both sexes. There can be extreme violence, mind control, systematic torture and even, in some cases, a complex belief system which is sometimes described as religion. I say 'described as' religion because, to me, I think that when this aspect is involved, it is window dressing. I'm not religious. I cried many times for God to save me. I was always ignored — how could I believe? However, I think that ritual abusers who do use religious imagery or 'beliefs' are doing so to justify it all to themselves, or to confuse the victim, or to hide their activities. Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.

Those who are not psychologically sophisticated, do not realise the extent to which the average person is unconsciously motivated by jealousy and envy. People who are not happy, confident, and fulfilled will generally resent those who are happier, more confident, and more fulfilled than them. Admiration and envy seem to be received in equal proportion as one develops and succeeds. Many famous people are admired with a passion and also hated with a vengeance. Powerful political leaders are respected and also ruthlessly criticised. Famous movie stars are adored and also grossly invaded and scrutinised. Nevertheless, we learn to think not 'what the world is doing to us' but 'what we are doing for the world.' Our attention is not on how the world is hurting us, but on how our presence is helping to heal the world. This outward and upward focus is our protection and our guide.

Inclusion safety: Are you prepared to cross the threshold of inclusion, bridge differences, and invite others into your society? 2. Learner safety: Are you prepared to encourage others to learn? 3. Contributor safety: Are you prepared to give others the autonomy to contribute and deliver results? 4. Challenger safety: And finally, are you prepared to cross the threshold of innovation and provide air cover for others to challenge the status quo and innovate?

Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection. In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012). Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009). In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010). Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011). All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time. We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment".

Many of us believe that if we only had more money, we would be happier. Yet--excluding those who live below the poverty line and cannot meet their basic needs for food, shleter, safety, or medical care--greater wealth generally does not lead to substantially greater well-being. One explanation for why more money does not bring lasting happiness is that people become accustomed to their higher standard of living and desire even more money to maintain their happiness. In addition, when people become wealthier, they tend to compare themselves to other wealthy people, rather than to their peers at their previous income levels.

Something strange happens about dreams that Gloria has – the real world seems to get mixed up into the dreams and the dreams seem all the more real – with part of your mind you’re aware of what’s going on around you, but part of your mind is drifting and things start to get mixed up. What I’m trying to say is that the human mind has developed a safety valve and dreaming is really the unconscious mind (me in this case) clearing up the debris it has otherwise been unable to cope with on the conscious level – if this is so, then tonight’s dreams became like “a horror show” in which Gloria and I were literally imprisoned.” Gloria’s Helper

It is the result of the frustration of infantile urges and the primal hunger caused by emotional deprivation in one’s childhood. It is the process of reliving rather than living, choosing bondage over freedom, the old over the new, the past over the now. It is the attempt to recreate a parent or parents in other persons or institutions, or even, if all else fails, in oneself. It is the abrogation of real power in exchange for childish manipulations. It is the avoidance of genuine friendship, free choice, and love in favor of familiarity and false safety. In other words, one clings to the emotional deadness of the family and to illusions of safety and security by repeating early patterns with new objects.

There is a consensus among psychologists who study such subjects that people develop their concept of who they are, and of what they want to achieve in life, according to a sequence of steps. Each man or woman starts with a need to preserve the self, to keep the body and its basic goals from disintegrating. At this point the meaning of life is simple; it is tantamount to survival, comfort, and pleasure. When the safety of the physical self is no longer in doubt, the person may expand the horizon of his or her meaning system to embrace the values of a community—the family, the neighborhood, a religious or ethnic group. This step leads to a greater complexity of the self, even though it usually implies conformity to conventional norms and standards. The next step in development involves reflective individualism. The person again turns inward, finding new grounds for authority and value within the self. He or she is no longer blindly conforming, but develops an autonomous conscience. At this point the main goal in life becomes the desire for growth, improvement, the actualization of potential. The fourth step, which builds on all the previous ones, is a final turning away from the self, back toward an integration with other people and with universal values. In this final stage the extremely individualized person—like Siddhartha letting the river take control of his boat—willingly merges his interests with those of a larger whole. In

With gratitude I remember the people, animals, plants, insects, creatures of the sky and sea, air and water, fire and earth, all whose joyful exertion blesses my life every day. With gratitude I remember the care and labor of a thousand generations of elders and ancestors who came before me. I offer my gratitude for the safety and well-being I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the blessings of this earth I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the measure of health I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the community I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the teachings and lessons I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the life I have been given. Just

As a result of the experience of consistent parental love and caring throughout childhood, such fortunate children will enter adulthood not only with a deep internal sense of their own value but also with a deep internal sense of security. All children are terrified of abandonment, and with good reason. This fear of abandonment begins around the age of six months, as soon as the child is able to perceive itself to be an individual, separate from its parents. For with this perception of itself as an individual comes the realization that as an individual it is quite helpless, totally dependent and totally at the mercy of its parents for all forms of sustenance and means of survival. To the child, abandonment by its parents is the equivalent of death. Most parents, even when they are otherwise relatively ignorant or callous, are instinctively sensitive to their children’s fear of abandonment and will therefore, day in and day out, hundreds and thousands of times, offer their children needed reassurance: “You know Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to leave you behind”; “Of course Mommy and Daddy will come back to get you”; “Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to forget about you.” If these words are matched by deeds, month in and month out, year in and year out, by the time of adolescence the child will have lost the fear of abandonment and in its stead will have a deep inner feeling that the world is a safe place in which to be and protection will be there when it is needed. With this internal sense of the consistent safety of the world, such a child is free to delay gratification of one kind or another, secure in the knowledge that the opportunity for gratification, like home and parents, is always there, available when needed.

The Pathe & Mullen (1997) sample almost unanimously reported deterioration in mental and physical well-being as a consequence of the harassment. (..) These victims often described a preoccupation with their stalker, one commenting: "I think I’ve become as obsessed as the stalker himself". (..) Whenever stalking victims present it is essential to assess their suicide potential and continue to monitor this. (..) Victims of stalking often respond to cognitive-orientated psychological therapies because stalking breaches previously held assumptions about their safety. The belief of victims in their strength and resilience and their confidence in the reasonable and predictable nature of the world are frequently shattered, to be replaced with feelings of extreme vulnerability and an expectation of pervasive danger and unpredictable harm. Cognitive therapies attempt to restructure these morbid perceptions of the world that threaten the victim’s adaptation and functioning. (..) Avoidance can respond to behavioural therapies such as prolonged exposure and stress inoculation, which aim to assist victims to gradually resume abandoned activities and manage the associated anxiety.

Others praise ceremonial Magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy! Our asylums are crowded, the stage is over-run! Is it by symbolizing we become the symbolized? Were I to crown myself King, should I be King? Rather should I be an object of disgust or pity. These Magicians, whose insincerity is their safety, are but the unemployed dandies of the Brothels. Magic is but one's natural ability to attract without asking; ceremony what is unaffected, its doctrine the negation of theirs. I know them well and their creed of learning that teaches the fear of their own light. Vampires, they are as the very lice in attraction. Their practices prove their incapacity, they have no magic to intensify the normal, the joy of a child or healthy person, none to evoke their pleasure or wisdom from themselves. Their methods depending on a morass of the imagination and a chaos of conditions, their knowledge obtained with less decency than the hyena his food, I say they are less free and do not obtain the satisfaction of the meanest among animals. Self condemned in their disgusting fatness, their emptiness of power, without even the magic of personal charm or beauty, they are offensive in their bad taste and mongering for advertisement. The freedom of energy is not obtained by its bondage, great power not by disintegration. Is it not because our energy (or mind stuff) is already over bound and divided, that we are not capable, let alone magical? 

A number of mechanisms make it difficult for the victim to separate psychologically from the abuser following prolonged captivity. Two such mechanisms are fear of losing the only positive relationship available to the victim during this prolonged period of isolation—marked by terrorization and the resultant craving for nurturance, protection, and safety—and fear of losing the only identity that remains, namely, her or his self as seen through the eyes of the abuser. These fears are expressed variously: fear of abandonment, of being lonely, of not being able to live without the abuser, and of not knowing who one is without the abuser, feeling empty, and so on. The greater the victim’s fears, the greater was her or his isolation from perspectives other than the abuser’s, and the greater the damage to the sense of self. In the case of child victims, this view of self may be the only sense of sell' they have ever experienced; in the case of adult victims, this view of self may have replaced a previous sense of self. In any case, living without the abuser, and thus without a sense of self, is experienced by the victim as a threat to psychic survival. Loss of their only “friend” and of self as experienced through the abuser’s eyes requires victims to take a leap into a terrifying unknown, which is difficult even for people in healthy environments. It is considerably more difficult for someone whose survival depends on the fragile feelings of predictability and control produced by cognitive distortions and the whims of a terrorist.

Also bearing witness to the unbearable nature of the vulnerability experienced by peer-oriented kids is the preponderance of vulnerability-quelling drugs. Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious. The older and more peer-oriented the kids, the more drugs seem to be an inherent part of their lifestyle. Peer orientation creates an appetite for anything that would reduce vulnerability. Drugs are emotional painkillers. And, in another way, they help young people escape from the benumbed state imposed by their defensive emotional detachment. With the shutdown of emotions come boredom and alienation. Drugs provide an artificial stimulation to the emotionally jaded. They heighten sensation and provide a false sense of engagement without incurring the risks of genuine openness. In fact, the same drug can play seemingly opposite functions in an individual. Alcohol and marijuana, for example, can numb or, on the other hand, free the brain and mind from social inhibitions. Other drugs are stimulants — cocaine, amphetamines, and ecstasy; the very name of the latter speaks volumes about exactly what is missing in the psychic life of our emotionally incapacitated young people. The psychological function served by these drugs is often overlooked by well-meaning adults who perceive the problem to be coming from outside the individual, through peer pressure and youth culture mores. It is not just a matter of getting our children to say no. The problem lies much deeper. As long as we do not confront and reverse peer orientation among our children, we are creating an insatiable appetite for these drugs. The affinity for vulnerability-reducing drugs originates from deep within the defended soul. Our children's emotional safety can come only from us: then they will not be driven to escape their feelings and to rely on the anesthetic effects of drugs. Their need to feel alive and excited can and should arise from within themselves, from their own innately limitless capacity to be engaged with the universe. This brings us back to the essential hierarchical nature of attachment. The more the child needs attachment to function, the more important it is that she attaches to those responsible for her. Only then can the vulnerability that is inherent in emotional attachment be endured. Children don't need friends, they need parents, grandparents, adults who will assume the responsibility to hold on to them. The more children are attached to caring adults, the more they are able to interact with peers without being overwhelmed by the vulnerability involved. The less peers matter, the more the vulnerability of peer relationships can be endured. It is exactly those children who don't need friends who are more capable of having friends without losing their ability to feel deeply and vulnerably. But why should we want our children to remain open to their own vulnerability? What is amiss when detachment freezes the emotions in order to protect the child?

When we feel frustrated, our first inclination is to change whatever isn't working for us. We can try to accomplish this by making demands on others, attempting to alter our own behavior, or by a variety of other means. Having moved us to action, frustration will have done its duty. The problem is that life brings many frustrations that are beyond us: we cannot alter time or change the past or undo what we have done. We cannot avoid death, make good experiences last, cheat on reality, make something work that won't, or induce someone to cooperate with us when they may not feel like it. We are unable to always make things fair or to guarantee our own or another's safety. Of all these unavoidable frustrations the most threatening for children is that they cannot make themselves psychologically and emotionally secure. These extremely important needs — to be wanted, invited, liked, loved, and special — are out of their control. As long as we parents are successful in holding on to our children, they need not be confronted with this deep futility, fundamental to human existence. It is not that we can forever protect them from reality, but children should not have to face challenges they are not ready for. Peer-oriented children are not so lucky. Given the degree of frustration they experience, they become desperate to change things, to somehow secure their attachments. Some become compulsively demanding in their relationships with one another. Some become preoccupied with making themselves more attractive in the eyes of their peers — hence the large increase in the demand for cosmetic surgery among young people and hence, too, their obsession with being fashionably chic at earlier and earlier ages. Some become bossy, others charmers or entertainers. Some bend over backward, turning into psychological pretzels to preserve a sense of closeness with their peers. Perpetually dissatisfied, these children are out of touch with the source of their discontent and rail against a reality they have no control over. Of course, the same dynamics may also occur in children's relationships with adults — and all too often do — but they are absolutely guaranteed to be present in peer-oriented relationships. No matter how much the peer-oriented child attempts to change things by making demands, altering her appearance, making things work for others; no matter how she tones down her true personality or compromises herself, she will find only fleeting relief. She'll find no lasting relief from the unrelenting attachment frustration, and there will be the added frustration of continually hitting against this wall of impossibility. Her frustration, rather than coming to an end, moves one step closer to being transformed into aggression.

Thus polyvictimization or complex trauma are "developmentally adverse interpersonal traumas" (Ford, 2005) because they place the victim at risk not only for recurrent stress and psychophysiological arousal (e.g., PTSD, other anxiety disorders, depression) but also for interruptions and breakdowns in healthy psychobiological, psychological, and social development. Complex trauma not only involves shock, fear, terror, or powerlessness (either short or long term) but also, more fundamentally, constitutes a violation of the immature self and the challenge to the development of a positive and secure self, as major psychic energy is directed toward survival and defense rather than toward learning and personal development (Ford, 2009b, 2009c). Moreover, it may influence the brain's very development, structure, and functioning in both the short and long term (Lanius et al., 2010; Schore, 2009). Complex trauma often forces the child victim to substitute automatic survival tactics for adaptive self-regulation, starting at the most basic level of physical reactions (e.g., intense states of hyperarousal/agitation or hypoarousal/immobility) and behavioral (e.g., aggressive or passive/avoidant responses) that can become so automatic and habitual that the child's emotional and cognitive development are derailed or distorted. What is more, self-integrity is profoundly shaken, as the child victim incorporates the "lessons of abuse" into a view of him or herself as bad, inadequate, disgusting, contaminated and deserving of mistreatment and neglect. Such misattributions and related schema about self and others are some of the most common and robust cognitive and assumptive consequences of chronic childhood abuse (as well as other forms of interpersonal trauma) and are especially debilitating to healthy development and relationships (Cole & Putnam, 1992; McCann & Pearlman, 1992). Because the violation occurs in an interpersonal context that carries profound significance for personal development, relationships become suspect and a source of threat and fear rather than of safety and nurturance. In vulnerable children, complex trauma causes compromised attachment security, self-integrity and ultimately self-regulation. Thus it constitutes a threat not only to physical but also to psychological survival - to the development of the self and the capacity to regulate emotions (Arnold & Fisch, 2011). For example, emotional abuse by an adult caregiver that involves systematic disparagement, blame and shame of a child ("You worthless piece of s-t"; "You shouldn't have been born"; "You are the source of all of my problems"; "I should have aborted you"; "If you don't like what I tell you, you can go hang yourself") but does not involve sexual or physical violation or life threat is nevertheless psychologically damaging. Such bullying and antipathy on the part of a primary caregiver or other family members, in addition to maltreatment and role reversals that are found in many dysfunctional families, lead to severe psychobiological dysregulation and reactivity (Teicher, Samson, Polcari, & McGreenery, 2006).

Sharon passed around a handout: "Triangle of Self-Actualization" by Abraham Maslow. The levels of human motivation. It resembled the nutrition triangle put out by the FDA, with five horizontal levels of multiple colors. I vaguely remembered it from my one college psychology course in the 1970's. "Very applicable with refugees," Sharon said. "Maslow theorized that one could not move to a higher level until the prior level was satisfied. The first level, the triangle base, is physiological needs. Like food and water. Until a person has enough to eat and drink, that's all one would be concerned with." I'd never experienced not being able to satisfy my thirst or hunger, but it sounded logical that that would be my only concern in such a situation. For the Lost Boys, just getting enough food and water had been a daily struggle. I wondered what kind of impact being stuck at the bottom level for the last fourteen years would have on a person, especially a child and teen. "The second level is safety and security. Home. A sanctuary. A safe place." Like not being shot at or having lions attack you. They hadn't had much of level two, either. Even Kakuma hadn't been safe. A refugee camp couldn't feel like home. "The third level is social. A sense of belonging." Since they'd been together, they must have felt like they belonged, but perhaps not on a larger scale, having been displaced from home and living in someone else's country. "Once a person has food, shelter, family and friends, they can advance to the fourth level, which is ego. Self-esteem." I'd never thought of those things occurring sequentially, but rather simultaneously, as they did in my life. If I understood correctly, working on their self-esteem had not been a large concern to them, if one at all. That was bound to affect them eventually. In what way remained to be seen. They'd been so preoccupied with survival that issues of self-worth might overwhelm them at first. A sure risk for insecurity and depression. The information was fascinating and insightful, although worrisome in terms of Benson, Lino, and Alepho. It also made me wonder about us middle-and upper-class Americans. We seldom worried about food, except for eating too much, and that was not what Maslow had been referring to. Most of us had homes and safety and friends and family. That could mean we were entirely focused on that fourth level: ego. Our efforts to make ourselves seem strong, smart, rich, and beautiful, or young were our own kind of survival skill. Perhaps advancing directly to the fourth level, when the mind was originally engineered for the challenges of basic survival, was why Prozac and Zoloft, both antidepressants, were two of the biggest-selling drugs in America. "The pinnacle of the triangle," Sharon said, "is the fifth level. Self-actualization. A strong and deeply felt belief that as a person one has value in the world. Contentment with who one is rather than what one has. Secure in ones beliefs. Not needing ego boosts from external factors. Having that sense of well-being that does not depend on the approval of others is commonly called happiness." Happiness, hard to define, yet obvious when present. Most of us struggled our entire lives to achieve it, perhaps what had brought some of us to a mentoring class that night.